Internet Marketing and Web Development Resources
Home Site Map About Contact

Dark Blue Affiliate Product Data Feed Guide


Table of Contents

Dark Blue Affiliate Product Data Feed

Dark Blue at DarkBlue.com is a small U.S. affiliate network that looks at first glance more like a CPA network, because the majority of offers available at the network are CPA and not revenue share.

It is easy to assume that they don't have anything such as product data feeds, but they actually do have this option available for advertisers who can and want to use this feature.

You can see, in the "Get Advertisement"/"Advertiser Detail" page right after the screen shot and basic advertiser information a box that states "Content feed available" with a link that takes you to a page where you select your site(s) where you want to use the product data. It then takes you to a screen where you can decide if you would like to see the content feed data online and browse it view a web interface to get link codes for individual products or to see the raw feed data in delimited format.

The URL to pull the feed looks like this.
http://www.darkblue.com/index.htm?area=gaFeed&site=111111&link=222222&refData=&query=&csv=1

You can tell that this fearure is not important to them, because it is burried within the site, of low quality and no reference or documentation that provides help and answers exists anywhere on the site (unless it is even better hidden than the product feeds, because I could not find anything).


The Data Feed URL Parameters


Return to Network Specific Implementation Guides and Documentations or to Affiliate Datafeeds Resources.

URL ParamValueComment
areagaFeedrequired, don't change that
site[yoursiteid]the affiliate id that identifies your site. I will use 111111 for my ficticious affiliate site in the examples.
link[uniqueidforfeed]the unique ID for the data feed of the advertiser. It is not the advertiser ID and you can't really guess it. I will use 222222 as my ficticious feed ID for examples.
csv1raw and tab delimited feed data
0web interface
refDataempty/SIDthis seems to be used for custom tracking like CJs SID
The default URL for a product looks like this
http://dbbsrv.com/refer/111111/222222/?feed=999&feedcid=88888&feedh=1a2b3

If I pulled the feed with refData=ccutrack, the product link changed to:
http://dbbsrv.com/refer/111111/222222/ccutrack?feed=999&feedcid=88888&feedh=1a2b3
queryempty/anythingempty = 0, if set to anything, but nothing or 0, then the "?" in the product URL will be replaced with "[queryvalue]&". I have no idea what the purpose of this exercise is.
Default URL with refData filled up, but value for "query" left empty (default):
http://www.darkblue.com/index.htm?area=gaFeed&site=111111&link=222222&refData=ccutrack&query=&csv=1

The product URL would like like this:
http://dbbsrv.com/refer/111111/222222/ccutrack?feed=999&feedcid=88888&feedh=1a2b3

If the value for "query" is changed to "1" then URL url changes to this:
http://dbbsrv.com/refer/111111/222222/ccutrack1&feed=999&feedcid=88888&feedh=1a2b3

The length of the value for "query" is NOT limited to one character.

- top -

Optional Parameters for the Web Interface


Return to Network Specific Implementation Guides and Documentations or to Affiliate Datafeeds Resources.

Optional parameters for web interface (csv=0). They don't work for the delimited feed requests (unfortunately).

URL ParamValueComment
path[category]filter product data by product category (optional, works only if csv=0)
search[keyword]keyword, phrase to filter products results by
gogoonly required for keyword search

- top -


The File Format


Return to Network Specific Implementation Guides and Documentations or to Affiliate Datafeeds Resources.

The feed data are directly returned in the browser, no file is created to download first, which means that you can do feed requests via XMLHTTP and process the results on the fly without the need to mess around with files on your hard drive.

The column delimiter is the TAB character (character (9))

The line break (row delimiter) is a carriage return + line feed (character (13) + character (10)), which is typical for windows, but not what UNIX or Linux folks would expect (line feed only).

The file includes the column names in the first row.

Character string values within the feed content are not enclosed in double quotes or any other special characters to indicate that the value is a text or characters and not something else.

The feed has a fix number of columns, which is SIX.

- top -


The Columns


Return to Network Specific Implementation Guides and Documentations or to Affiliate Datafeeds Resources.

The Dark Blue data feed or content feed (that is what they call it) contains 6 columns.
The maximum length of any character values is unknown, but you can apply common sense here

#NameTypeComment
1.name character product name
2.description character product description without line breaks, because that is the row delimited
3.price numeric numeric with always 2 digits after the digital point which is "." and not ",". xx.xx without currency indicator
4.category character product category name
5.link_url character product detail link
http://dbbsrv.com/refer/111111/222222/?feed=999&feedcid=88888&feedh=1a2b3
6.image_url character thumbnail image url
http://dbbsrv.com/image/111111/222222/?feed=999&feedcid=88888&feedh=1a2b3

Note: The query parameters after the ?, namely "feed", "feedcid" and "feedh" are information like the merchant product ID and things like that. Each of the parameters has different values within a single feed.

You might notice that the Dark Blue product data feeds do not contain a unique product identifier, which is bad for you, because that means that you do not have a lookup key to find out, if you have a product imported in the past already or if it is completely new.

I suggest that you parse the Dark Blue internal parameters from the affiliate URL and use those values as key. They should be unique.

- top -

Other Data Feed Guides, Articles and Resources for Affiliates and Advertisers


Cumbrowski.com Sponsors

See the Advertiser Kit to learn more about sponsorship opportunities at Cumbrowski.com. Press? Download my Media Kit.

Email Alert & Newsletter (privacy) My Blog Posts and Newsletter (read)


Enter your email address:

or ReveNews - Carsten Cumbrowski - Feed